


Breathe Deep

by SolarPoweredFlashlight



Category: League of Legends
Genre: F/F, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 11:01:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16831324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolarPoweredFlashlight/pseuds/SolarPoweredFlashlight
Summary: Karma, Irelia and Riven are all different people with different needs, but the quiet support and understanding they offer each other gives them the strength they need to push forward when life is difficult.





	Breathe Deep

They fall into the habit of waking up together.

Irelia is an early riser. So is Karma. So is Riven.

And besides, none of them are really interested in falling back asleep in an empty bed.

So when Karma stirs and slides from warm arms to go put on tea, Irelia picks herself up and starts her morning stretches and Riven plucks herself out of the pillows to find some underwear.

Their days often take them different places, between their varying duties, but they always start them together. The mornings come to have a certain smell to them, the smell of herbal tea and linens and freshly washed hair and the mint leaves Riven likes to chew after breakfast.

They breathe deep of each other, and it gives them the energy to face reality.

**Lemon and Ginger**

It’s visible in Karma’s jaw when she’s upset, Riven’s found. Karma tries so hard not to let it show when things are starting to feel hopeless, when the time spent travelling back and forth between Galrin wears on her harder than usual.

Irelia wears her anger in her jaw, but she also wears it more plainly in the agitation of her blades. Karma’s tells are a little more subtle, but they’re there.

Riven doesn’t always have the words or the wisdom to take care of her loved ones when they’re hurting, but she puts on the tea she knows Karma saves for bad days and she finds the woman where she’s sitting, half calm, half desolate, at her writing desk. There’s a letter to an important diplomat from the mainland half written in front of her. Karma’s writing is so elegant.

Riven comes up behind her; she’s not afraid of startling her. In fact, Riven is quite sure by now that Karma’s awareness of her immediate surroundings is almost certainly touched by magic. Strange, benevolent monk magic. How much her life has changed.

She presses up against her lover, and wishes Irelia were back from work. Irelia is better than words with she is, even if Karma tends to be the one that’s best at soothing wounded hearts and minds.

Karma leans her head back against Riven’s stomach, looking up at her with a soft smile.

“I smell lemon and ginger. Are you feeling alright?”

“I am,” Riven says, touching her shoulder lightly, “but you’re not.”

Concern turns to affection and tiredness in Karma’s face. “Today was… hard. Every day is hard.”

Riven can believe it. Even the time they’ve spent living in Navori trying to undo the damage bit by bit has been hard on all of them, but Galrin is worse.

Seeing Galrin helped solidify in her mind what she’d begun to fear long ago, that Noxian strength was a grand ideal used to justify economically motivated plunder of resources they had no right to. She’d thought they were bringing meritocracy and success to a backwards nation of old money and corrupt fools. Galrin made it clear that the High Command didn’t expect this gift to be given without getting anything in return.

Karma had sat with her in the mud between the roots of a stump with a diameter three times the height of the biggest of Zaun’s war machines. Eight thousand years old and breathing deep with ancient magic, these trees were the overseers of generations of Ionians who managed their forests with sustainability in mind, not profit.

All of them gone. Not one left.

And all the locals who tried to stop it from happening just as gone as the trees.

How did you rebuild from a war that in seven years destroyed the work of eight thousand?

“You should take a break,” Riven says. Karma reaches up and wraps her fingers around Riven’s hand, then draws that hand to her mouth to kiss it.

“I think that’s a good idea. Thank you.”

Riven’s not always the best with words. But tea and neck rubs she can do.

**Honesty and Justice**

The first time they sparred was the first time Irelia saw her in that way.

No, not saw… _felt_.

Now when their blades meet and Irelia feels Riven’s willpower coursing through the clashing edges, it’s a familiar sensation, a much-loved and intimate reminder of when she first began to let go of “Noxian” and focus on “warrior”.

She’d loved Karma for the strength of her will long before the events at the Placidium; it should hardly have shocked her that the strength of Riven’s will would be the pathway along which she began to love her, as well.

“You’re smiling,” Riven says, settling back into her defensive stance after the recoil of another blow. “What are you smiling about?”

Irelia _is_ smiling, although not with her face. It amazes her that even without paranormal sensitivity, Riven’s blade still communicates such subtle truths to its owner.

“Defeat me, and perhaps I’ll tell you,” Irelia challenges, feeling playful.

Unlike Irelia, Riven smiles with her face.

When they spar nowadays, it feels more like foreplay than battle. They circle each other, they watch each other, they feel each other. The movement of her weapons is the flutter of her breath, the quirk of her amusement, and then a forward dart that is little more than a playful prod, dodged so easily by her partner.

Their eyes meet and they know the fun is about to begin in earnest.

The love of warriors – the meeting of edges – the thrill of being about to meet each touch with blades alive with perception, as if the fine metal were filled with nerve endings – they fight, and each ringing connection is a hungry kiss. Irelia forgets that she is no longer technically alive; Irelia comes alive, Irelia is alive, Irelia never stopped living. It’s like the battlefield but better, more human, less war machine.

The edge of the shattered sword clangs and chatters against her, and she no longer regards it as the remnants of an old enemy. The blade is Riven, and stars above how she’s come to love this woman.

Riven is the good in the world that found a way to resist the worst of its poisons. Honesty and purity and justice in spite of an upbringing of cruelty and greed.

Irelia feels it all when they spar.

Irelia never loves her more than when they touch like this.

They fight and Riven is a little more determined than usual to win – intrigued by the mystery smile, Irelia would guess, from the slight cues in how she’s fighting. It excites her. They increase the pace, turning, lunging, intercepting hits and dodging others, aware of the true sharpness of their weaponry and sharing the rush of the risk.

Her partner is soon breathing hard, her neck and forehead flushed red, sweat on her temples. Irelia is getting tired, too, although her body doesn’t betray her. It isn’t just exhaustion, though. Her blades are electrified with the repeated contact, excitement and passion crackling through them just as surely as she sees the same excitement in Riven’s eyes.

They charge at each other again, they dance back and forth trading blows, one attacking and the other defending, and now they switch and the defender attacks, and now they switch again, one blow after the other, relentless, ruthless, pure will, pure strength, pure intentions.

Irelia backs away, and now even _her_ chest is heaving, a familiar movement long rendered unnecessary, appearing now as the ghost of an old habit. Riven circles her, watches her blades dance and pulse hungrily, and then makes an all-too-accurate interpretation; the ex-Noxian drops her shattered sword, strides towards her, and soon their kisses are mouth on mouth instead of edge on edge.

“Just you,” Irelia growls between kisses, “I was just smiling at you.”

**Strength and Determination**

“There are more poisons left in Ionia than just the ones in our soil and our air,” Karma murmurs against Irelia’s ear. The tree they’ve chosen to seek peace together under has done much to soothe their nerves, but there’s still just so much to worry about. “The Elder of Shon-Xan speaks with a bitterness in her heart at how long the mainland dithered and allowed the Noxian presence to go unchallenged. I’ve every reason to believe her feelings match those of the people of her province.”

“And with what military strength did they expect us to march?” Irelia replies, tense, agitated. Karma knows what bothers her lover is not the Elder’s accusations but the feeling that they are true.

“This is not your failing,” Karma whispers, knowing that the soothing touch she strokes against Irelia’s arm will go largely unperceived.

“Then whose is it?”

“If you seek someone to punish, let it be Noxus,” replies Karma, fire in her voice. “We must focus our energies on repairing the damage done, but while we rebuild, we do not forget the cause of the destruction. Justice _will_ come to the Noxians, my love.”

Karma’s anger has an oddly placating effect on Irelia. With the strength and determination of the Elder of Navori aligned with the goals she pursues, their success seems more inevitable.

“Can we bring the Shon-Xan people around?”

“If we are careful,” Karma murmurs, “they may be our greatest allies when the time comes to forge the third path.” The third path that will make Ionia great again one day.

“Just tell me what you need me to do and where you need me to be,” Irelia answers. Above them, a bird trills. Things feel right to Karma. Things feel like _progress_.

“I love you,” Karma says, and kisses the cheek of the woman settled in her arms.

They breathe deep of each other, and it gives them the energy to face reality.


End file.
